Search for MH370 to be most expensive

Family members cry as they light candles on a cake to mark the 21st birthday of a passenger on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, at the Lido Hotel in Beijing, yesterday.

SYDNEY: The hunt for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 is on track to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, becoming the most expensive search in aviation history with 26 countries contributing planes, ships, submarines and satellites to the international effort.

A month into the search for the jet, estimates show that at least $44m has already been spent on the deployment of military ships and aircraft in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea by Australia, China, the United States and Vietnam. The figure is based on defence force statistics on available hourly costs of various assets, estimates by defence analysts and costs reported by the Pentagon.

The figure for the first month of the search is already about equal to the official €32m ($44m) spent in searches lasting several months spread over a two-year time frame for Air France’s Flight AF447, which crashed into the mid-Atlantic in 2009.

Just as salvage experts said the actual costs for the Air France operation could have been three or four times higher than the official figure, the bill for the current search is expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

The $44m estimate for MH370 does not cover all defence assets being used by countries including Britain, France, New Zealand and South Korea, nor numerous other costs such as civilian aircraft, accommodation for hundreds of personnel and expenses for intelligence analysts worldwide.